


greatest artificer of our age

by SolaSola



Category: Dimension 20 (Web Series)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Artificers, Character Study, F/M, Fluff, Gorgug-centric, Multiclassing as a Form of Character Growth, Post-sophomore year
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-27
Updated: 2020-07-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:00:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25556980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SolaSola/pseuds/SolaSola
Summary: There is a power in a personal quest, not one big enough to earn 60% of your grade or save your life, but one that’s small and comfortable. One that fills all the empty spaces in your chest with the potential of whirring gears and thumping pistons and humming magic. His heart feels like it’s wearing spring-loaded Converse, and he’s confident he could jump to the moon right now.[5 times Gorgug was glad for that one level of Artificer + 1 time it wasn't just for him]
Relationships: Ayda Aguefort & Gorgug Thistlespring, Lydia Barkrock & Gorgug Thistlespring, Wilma Thistlespring & Gorgug Thistlespring & Digby Thistlespring, Zelda Donovan/Gorgug Thistlespring
Comments: 16
Kudos: 87





	greatest artificer of our age

**Author's Note:**

> This fic contains multimedia elements! Turn creator's style on to make it look like iOS texts, but all content should be just as readable with creator's style off too! 
> 
> Warning: a character has a panic attack in the third part of this fic. Feel free to skip right from the end of part two to part four; it's not necessary in order to understand the rest of the fic!

1\. Arborly

Gorgug thanks the gnomes again and heads back through the dark to the Hangvan at the house across Arborly. The buzz of the bubbly strawberry gnome wine is nothing next to the emotional high he’s riding. 

Zelda’s face, Zelda’s voice, Zelda’s watery smile half hidden behind her hair: they’re all still crystal-clear in his mind despite her phone’s blurry front facing camera. Gorgug isn’t usually sure about a lot of things, but he thinks he could name some pretty solid facts right now. He built a satellite uplink to talk to Zelda today, and it was okay. He talked to Zelda today, and they’re more than okay.  _ And she said I love you, _ he thinks.  _ No.  _ We _ said I love you. _

The van is dark and full of the rhythmic, sleepy breathing of his friends when he opens the driver’s side door as quietly as possible and slides into his Moon Haven-made pocket, nestled between the cushions of the front seat. It’s comfy, even for someone who’s six foot four. 

He’s lying on his side, hugging his pillow because he’s not quite willing to go to sleep and end this day just yet. His cheeks still kind of hurt from grinning. 

Gorgug’s got darkvision so he’s never really been scared of the dark, but there was something that made him shiver and curl into himself those nights on the Celestine Sea when he was lying awake with only his phone lighting up the room. Tracker’s Moon Havens have a soft darkness that comes from completely surrounding you with blankets. It felt almost cruelly different from the crystal he was grabbing onto like a lifeline, cold and hard and small in his hand. They say blue light keeps you awake, but he couldn’t look away. Every time another message didn’t go through, it would buzz in his hand, vibrating through his whole body like a reminder. 

Most of Spring Break has felt like an adventure taking place in some adrenaline-fueled space that doesn’t quite belong in even an Aguefort school year. Even those nights on the Celestine Sea feel ages ago. But this Gorgug feels even more different from the gutted one who was risking not completing a long rest, staring at his phone like maybe the next text would catch a miraculous snatch of signal. 

This Gorgug knows he made it work. 

In a different pocket in the back of the van, Adaine ends her trance and feels a glowing blue key slot into her hand; in this one, Gorgug taps through his texts from Zelda, plus an hour and a half’s worth of frantic DMs from the Seven Maidens. 

Right after they hung up, Zelda texted him a bunch of times in a row. 

**Zelda:** Love you  
**Zelda:** Really sucks that your quest is taking up all of break  
**Zelda:** Wish I could see you right now  


Zelda’s linked him to a playlist she made since the last time they texted, full of witchy doom metal that feels kind of sad but really good. There’s also a selfie, taken right after they hung up, where she’s dabbing at the corner of her eye with a sweater-pawed hand but grinning her face off. Gorgug saves it immediately—tonight felt important, and he wants to remember it, even with a shadowy, blurry photo. It feels like what he was feeling, pulling his hoodie back on and sticking one hand in the pocket as he listened to the slow ringing of his phone after he hit Zelda’s contact. It was something to ground him, before he knew she’d pick up.

**Gorgug:** Thanks for the playlist, it’s awesome  
**Gorgug:** Yeah, haven’t even gotten into the Nightmare King Forest yet, hoping to be back in Elmville with you soon though  
**Gorgug:** Love you too  
**Gorgug:** Idk if you’re gonna sleep soon but I do super wanna hear about how your break’s been! How was the Red Waste?  


He adds two axe emojis, a heart, a moon, and a tree—it’s inadequate, but anything else would be, too. He’s already listening to the playlist: the lyrics are haunting but the instrumentals are still amazing, some violin behind the drums. He wants to try out some of these beats when he gets back to a drum set, later. The songs feel inescapably very  _ Zelda _ . They keep texting, Zelda telling stories about the Maidens’ spring break quest. 

His crystal is noticeably heavier in his hand than before. To be honest, Gorgug kind of likes it: his crystal’s always felt kind of tiny and light in his big hands, and it fits better now with the gnome crafted battery and receiver added to the back. 

Back home, his dad Digby’s got a giant rubber and gunmetal super-protective phone case, with half-inch bumpers around his crystal that Wilma teases him about. For Gorgug, it feels like that, his new-ish phone in his hand. It’s like the weight of holding something very precious but very strong in your hand; it’s like the weight of his heart in his throat, terrifying but worth it. 

**Zelda:** Anyway Dani kinda wants that Blur spell now even though I don’t think she’ll ever quit Circle of the Forest  
**Zelda:** I miss talking to you sm but I’m also gonna let you sleep bc you have actual QUEST stuff to do tomorrow goodnight!!   
**Gorgug:** Thanks Zelda ❤️ miss you a ton  
**Gorgug:** Gonna try to talk to you tomorrow again if I can!  
**Gorgug:** Love you!!  


Even though the doom metal in his headphones is kind of melancholy, with the violin, Gorgug can’t stop smiling. He talked to the gnomes and couldn’t build a cell tower but got himself something better, something that fits heavy and right in his hand. His girlfriend might be at a party in Elmville but she’s texting him; two of his best friends in the world might be in hell but the Bad Kids will be coming to get them. Gorgug’s heart feels like it’s wearing spring-loaded Converse, and he’s confident he could jump to the moon right now. 

* * *

2\. Halfway between Bastion City and Elmville

When he leans his head against the window, the whole movement of the van vibrates through his bones like a reminder. He’s here. He’s safe. The worst thing he’s putting his body through right now is not a magical attack or a climb up an impossible cliff or a tunnel to a dungeon with a sphinx, but just the hard pressure of the window on his head through his hoodie and the jolt of the occasional pothole in the road. 

Where he is is in the back seat of the Hangvan, unusually enough. They’re passing through flat fields of something green and tall on the way home from Arborly, and the driver’s seat is currently occupied not by Gorgug but by Fig. Over the back of a row of seats he can see Ayda sitting sideways in the passenger seat, and they’re talking softly to avoid bothering the other nine people in the van, most of whom are sleeping. 

Gorgug taps through some of his social media, but it’s mostly Zelda’s party heckling him in his DMs (and in the group chat he got added to, for some reason?) and his notifications are full of people who found him from the Sig Figs’ shrimp-party-Nightmare-King-found-footage-viral-marketing YouTube channel. 

He ends up slowly scrolling through his phone to read through three weeks of forwarded emails and photos from the family group chat. It’s an impressive volume of stuff from his parents. He texted them last night to tell them they were heading home (with quest reward silver to buy back the Hangvan), but the last time he said anything in the chat before that feels like years ago: “Thanks Mom and Dad. Appreciate it, love you, awesome. We’re in the Nightmare King Forest and it’s pretty bad, but I think we’ll be okay.” The conversations before that feel like they happened in a different lifetime altogether.

If he were home right now he probably wouldn’t give the workshop photos a second glance—his parents send them to him even when they’re working on a project during the school day. But it’s been three weeks on the road and sue him, he realized in the Arborly Tinkerer’s Hall how much he misses waking up each morning to the faint smell of sawdust and sometimes acrid welding fumes from downstairs. So he swipes through all the pictures they texted him, watching projects get unbuilt as he goes further and further back chronologically. Wilma’s jetpack goes from a full set of wings to a metal frame to a plywood and canvas prototype; Digby’s got a workbench that disassembles itself from a painted final product, collapsing down into a skeleton that shows all the secret compartments and spring-loaded booby traps and then into a pile of metal. That one looks interesting, actually, and Gorgug finds himself opening up the emails they’ve sent him. One of them has a link to the Thistlespring Tree Workshop website that Wilma built a couple of years ago, where they’ve been putting up schematics and build logs.

Gorgug’s looking at blueprints and wondering if they could have fit an extra compartment in the workbench, maybe for some kind of power source for the table saw or a repellent cube to keep away miniature rust monsters, when he realizes he’s actually kind of invested. 

There is a power in feeling smart for the first time in a way you can  _ own _ . It’s not quite the same as balling shaking fists and yelling, “I’m a dumbass, eat me,” or the same either as brainstorming and throwing a few ideas in with the Bad Kids in a Hallowed Hangvan pocket as Riz and Adaine take charge of puzzling out a mystery. There is a power in a personal quest, not one big enough to earn 60% of your grade or save your life, but one that’s small and comfortable. One that fits in your hand like a rock that can record “It’s Gorgug, keep going” deep in a nightmare dungeon. One that fills all the empty spaces in your chest with the potential of whirring gears and thumping pistons and humming magic. 

And he gets it now, what his parents do, the spring-loaded glee that comes with wanting to make a tank or a satellite or a van exist and then just  _ doing it _ . He gets the joy in the  _ click _ when schematics make sense or a design idea slots into place in your head. 

His phone vibrates in his hand.

**Digby:** Proud of you for that brand spanking new level of artificer, bud! ⚙️ Way to try out new things during spring break. Better let us hear all about it when you get back 😃😃  
**Wilma:** If you’d want your own workbench in the shop now, we could work on your pop’s old one together, make it bigger for you 🦾 🦾 🦾 and get you some more magical tool space now that your pop’s built himself the new booby-trapped one! 🛠️  


Gorgug swipes back to his dad’s schematics for a second. He thinks he doesn’t quite want to build tanks or satellites or jetpacks, but smaller things sound nice. Little gadgets he could put magic into, tools to repair the van or Fabian’s bike, battery packs for satellite uplinks, springs for boots, gifts for friends. 

**Gorgug:** A workbench sounds really cool, saw dad’s blueprints on our website. Maybe something with lots of little drawers?   
**Wilma:** You got it bud, can’t wait to see you draw out some ideas in a couple days when you can get in the shop! 📐  


He keeps texting his parents even as the other passengers of the Hangvan start slowly waking up—they’re probably going to stop for gas and some food soon. Even through trading small talk with his parents, telling them about Kristen’s new goddex and the Sig Figs’ viral videos, Gorgug’s still thinking about the Tinkerer’s Hall back in Arborly.

Sprinting through the woods and being up all night aren’t too unusual to him, on a quest. But answering the gnomes’ questions about how crystals work, taking off his hoodie and sweating over hammering little rivets into metal—that’s new. That’s  _ fun _ . He tells his parents about Arborly, and Wilma and Digby start making noises about planning a trip to check out the town sometime.

_ Maybe we could be like sister workshops with them _ , Gorgug suggests, and his mom just sends back a whole line of flexing mechanical arms and thumbs ups (which is hopefully good?) 

As Ayda and Fig are starting to discuss various of diner food options, Gorgug leans his head against the window and turns his little tinkerer’s multitool over in his hand. He’s got plans for this first level of artificer, and he can’t wait to be home. 

* * *

3\. The Thistlespring Tree

When he shoots awake from a too-long nap the first thing Gorgug notices is that the grass of the lawn is poking him through his hoodie. The second thing he notices is that Zelda’s still asleep.

Their preferred version of hanging out sometimes involves ice cream and usually also involves sparring, and both of them ended up sprawling out contentedly on the Thistlesprings’ lawn after some unarmed combat practice. The nature of Gorgug’s family home is such that they’d had to check the grass first to toss some random nuts and bolts aside, but then they must’ve both fallen asleep in the summer shade.

The sky’s going purple and it makes him feel like he’s lost too much of the day. His fingers are restless and itchy, picking at his hoodie strings. Gorgug does his best to focus on Zelda still breathing rhythmically, making little snuffling noises in her sleep. It’s cute. But it was a longer nap than it was really supposed to be, and darkness has fallen in the way that makes Gorgug feel gross and tired.

The nature of adventuring is that it sneaks up on you, and Gorgug knows this. It’s only been a couple of months since he had to grab his parents’ van to chase down Fig and Riz in Bastion City a day before their Nightmare King quest was supposed to start; it’s only been a year and a bit since detention on the first day of school turned into his first fight (his first death). Every calm is the one right before the storm. 

The thing Gorgug is starting to learn after his second year of adventuring, though, is that adventuring also likes to sneak  _ back _ . 

One minute he’s squirming a little trying to stop weeds from poking him and the next his brain’s wondering if there are bugs in the lawn and then it feels like there are phantom bugs crawling over his ankles and maybe the grass is razor-sharp and will slice through his hands. Gorgug flicks his thumbs hard over the tops of his index fingers like he can rub off the tingling pins-and-needles insects that feel like they’re there. Gorgug shivers and wishes they weren’t in this May half-twilight, where his darkvision and his daytime vision are blurring into each other and he can’t be sure whether he’s seeing tiny bugs or just static, where he’s feeling too much and too little at the same time. 

Zelda bolts awake to a clearing that’s  _ glowing _ and her gasp shakes Gorgug out of wherever his brain took him. There are a half dozen rocks and nuts and bolts from the lawn in his hand that he must have grabbed, scrabbling around in the grass for something solid metal. In a fist so tight he knows there’ll be hexagon-shaped imprints and screw thread lines pressed into his skin, he’s almost unconsciously made them all glow, and they smell like citronella too. It’s blindingly bright and everything smells crisp and acidic, the opposite of dirt and bugs and dark and fear. Zelda rubs her eyes against the light at first, but Gorgug’s told her about the Nightmare Forest, and she knows what’s up as Gorgug breathes too hard and too fast, not knowing if he can stop, like trying to force loam out of his chest. 

If Gorgug ever doubted that he has the best girlfriend in the world, it’d be put to rest now as Zelda instantly just wraps his hands around his tinkered objects so he can hold on to them and then moves with him to where the Hangvan's parked in the Thistlespring driveway. They climb up on top where it's solid metal and smooth auto paint so that he's not feeling bugs crawl over his skin leaves poking through his hoodie dirt on his face in his lungs roots in his hair—

Gorgug lets Zelda push him a little so that he's sitting on the roof, then climb into his lap and just wrap her arms and legs both around his torso. Shakily, he buries his nose in her hair, in between her horns, and breathes in. 

Zelda picks up one of the glowing, citronella-scented hex nuts from where Gorgug's put them on the roof of the Hangvan and curls it in her palm as she breathes in and breathes out so Gorgug can match it. 

"You're fine, you're safe, we're on the roof of the Hangvan so we're not in the dirt anymore," she says into his chest. She can probably feel his heartbeat and his lungs both, right through his chest from where she's tucked herself. Zelda’s hugs are  _ hard _ and grounding, and Gorgug breathes out and feels his chest moving her arms. It helps. 

Zelda leans back and rolls the hex nut slowly over her palm and keeps talking, which also helps. “You’re really smart Gorgug, this is really cool.” Her nose twitches a bit, adorably, as she sniffs it. “The citronella’s a good idea, for keeping away bugs.”

It’s shaky, but Gorgug manages, “It was, uh. Kind of an accident.” 

“A happy accident.”

“You can, uh. You can keep it. If you want.” It comes out in three separate sentences because he’s still getting his lungs under control (swinging an axe is easy and this is not, but he’s working on it), but it makes Zelda smile and she moves a little, still in his lap, so she can put it in her hoodie pocket. 

The hex nut is still glowing through the fabric and when Zelda gently puts her hands up on either side of his face to hold on to him they smell faintly like citronella. She brings their foreheads together with a soft bump. 

“If my artificer boyfriend can make things freaking glow and smell like really nice bug repellent,” she says, “I can smash all the bugs for you.” 

It’s easy as breathing (and the breathing’s getting easier) when Gorgug laughs a little and says, “I do have an axe I can smash my own bugs with, you know.”

“Your axe is giant and the bugs are small. My aim’s better and you know it.” 

Gorgug’s not all happy, not all the time, and sometimes the Nightmare Forest still lives in his head even when the woods around Arborly no longer manifest people’s worst fears. But he gets to take a deep breath and banter around and kick his legs off the side of the Hangvan as he gives his girlfriend a kiss on the tip of her nose that she scrunches her face up for. 

He’s made the clearing bright with a handful of nuts and bolts that toss light and smell like citronella, and he’s happy to be Zelda’s kind-of-artificer boyfriend. 

* * *

4\. Mordred Manor kitchen

When Gorgug talks to Lydia Barkrock, he doesn’t really expect it to be an artificer thing. 

He’s at Mordred but the rest of the Bad Kids and Maidens are out doing separate things before coming back to the manor for dinner, so the house feels empty and he doesn’t really know what to do with himself. 

When he was little and his parents took him with them to a family friend's house for a visit, Gorgug would be the kid who followed his mom to the kitchen. Kitchens are full of people  _ doing _ things who give you clear directions. They don’t have other little kids whose names you’re supposed to know who you’re supposed to play with. And when he got older he learned that people like having you in kitchens—they like when you help get things down from high cabinets or heft big pots of stew, and sometimes they tell your mom you’re a good kid. 

So Gorgug ends up drifting towards the kitchen because that’s what he always does. Maybe he can fill up his water bottle, and Kristen’s told him where the secret stash of snacks is. He’s not expecting anyone to be there, which is why he almost gets impaled by Lydia Barkrock holding a knife as she wheels herself towards the sink. 

Lydia looks up from what she’s working on and waves, knife still in her hand. “Hey there, what’s up, kiddo?” she says, grinning wide enough Gorgug can see her tusks. She’s got one of those desk things on her lap in her wheelchair, the ones where it’s like a board on top of a cushion, and is methodically slicing up a whole bunch of bright orange sweet potatoes. “We got homemade sliders and sweet potato fries for dinner tonight if you wanna stay over,” she offers.

He doesn’t really know Lydia Barkrock that well, but he knows she’s Ragh’s mom and he was really sad when he thought she’d died. That’d been super fucked up. But Ragh talks a bunch about all the cool barbarian stuff he learned from her when he was really little. Gorgug’s parents are great, but they’re not the same. Ragh’s graduated and in Fallinel, probably kicking the butts of dumb high elves who can’t even pronounce  _ Gorgug _ properly. Which is cool, but Gorgug misses being able to complain with him about Porter’s class (and ask him for copies of Porter’s old tests) and half-orc stuff like  _ needing so much sleep, dude, and it’s normal, you know? But it majorly sucks and so does when your tusks are growing and so does needing to eat twelve steaks per day to put on mass _ —okay, well, not that last part. 

But Lydia’s also a half-orc! And a barbarian! Does someone still count as a barbarian if she’s not adventuring? But she used to be a barbarian. Does she still rage, if she’s mostly a mom now? It’s making Gorgug’s head spin, so he decides it’s whatever.

Lydia probably sees the backpack Gorgug hasn’t dropped anywhere yet (he usually puts it whosever’s room he’s studying in, but everyone who lives in Mordred is out) and the empty water bottle hanging in his hand, because she says, “Can always use a pair of helping hands with dinner, too, if you’ve got nothing to do.” 

So he gets the peeler from the drawer Lydia points to (knife still in hand, because of course) and starts peeling sweet potatoes into the sink. 

“Do you still rage?”

It feels a little like asking someone if they’re his dad, the question out before he really decides to ask it. “Because I was wondering if you’re still a barbarian if you’re not an adventurer, or if you’re still a barbarian if you don’t rage, and—” he trails off, but Lydia’s just paused in her chopping to think about it. He feels like he’s got to keep talking and explain himself, so he says, “I don’t know, I’m angry a lot of the time? But raging still feels kind of bad. And scary, cause I could hurt my friends? So I’m mostly asking like, can you be a barbarian without raging?” 

It’s a lot of words, for him, but Lydia’s listening. 

"Well now. It's mostly just a tool. It kept me alive for a long time  _ after _ I stopped adventuring, can't really hate anything about that," Lydia says. The gem in her chest is obvious. She sees his peeled sweet potatoes and points (with her knife) at a salad bowl inexplicably stored on  _ top _ of some cabinets, and Gorgug goes to grab it. Even he has to go on his tiptoes a little to reach it. He hands it to her and follows with his handful of sweet potatoes as she maneuvers her chair over to the dining room table, which is lower than the kitchen counters so she can start assembling a whole bunch of stuff: a big green salad, the sweet potato sticks on a big pan, a plastic bag full of slider buns.

"Thank you. But yeah, it's kinda just like the chair. A thing I use. Not a thing I am, not all the time. Hell if I’m not grateful for it, though." Grinning, she taps her fist on her chest twice (thankfully no knife in hand, Gorgug doesn’t know what he’d do if she did that). “Glad I’m alive, yknow, heh?” 

Gorgug starts (messily, he’s not as good as Lydia and the table’s a little low for him) slicing up his potatoes into fry-ish shapes and dumping them into the bowl where Lydia emptied the ones from her lap-desk-cutting-board situation, and he thinks about it. 

He’s getting better at separating out the things he does from the things he is. Artificing has been that for him, a lot—some days he still worries he’s a dumbass who’s gonna get eaten, but then he can see the things he’s made, the magic he’s done, in little trinkets he can keep in his hoodie pocket all the time so he can’t forget. There’s a little clockwork mouse he made with his mom that he keeps in there that Zelda really likes, and sometimes he’ll sneak it into her hair to make her shriek and laugh when she finds it.

He’s heard Fig launch into a whole  _ thing _ about this at Bad Kid sleepover nights, loudly making her point about why her warlock levels make her a better bard.

“Because my music’s all about, like, rebellion and shit, and revenge on assholes who hurt me and my friends, and then I get to straight up hex them and get stronger when they die! What’s more punk rock than that?” She’d made the sign of the horns and then Kristen had asked her something about why all her songs were getting so sappy these days, in that case. And then Fig had probably started a pillowfight about that. To be honest, most of Gorgug’s recollections of Bad Kid sleepover nights are kind of fuzzy because he’s always hearing everything sorta muffled from under a pile of everyone who claims he makes the best pillow. But that seems about right, for Fig. 

“Rage’s just a tool, kiddo. Like the knives—could use them to hurt people, hell, I’d sure know how to. But these days I’d rather just feed all you guys instead. Sweet potato fries are more fun than the Red Waste,” Lydia says, nodding approvingly at his wonky potato sticks and starting to dump some oil and pepper and salt into the bowl. 

Gorgug doesn’t know a whole lot about a lot of things, but he thinks he’s been getting better at knowing about tools. He thinks about flicking through the attachments on his multitool, learning what he needs to cut or file or tighten or measure or saw. Yeah. He knows tools now. Maybe rage can be like that, like something he can pivot right back into the handle when he’s done. Not really a barbarian thing, but not just an artificer thing either. A Gorgug thing. 

“Miss adventuring, a whole bunch,” Lydia says. “But it’s fun hearing you kids come home and tell me all about it, anyway. And watching that stream on your guys’ channel.” She takes the knife and starts absolutely going to work on a hunk of meat she’s maneuvered herself over to get out of the fridge, chopping it down into cubes on her lap desk. Gorgug’s a little scared of her, and he remembers now that Ragh said his mom used to wield twin machetes. “You protected your friends, nothing scary about that anger. And the way you’re using it’s good.”

Gorgug does his best not to stare, but Lydia moves  _ fast _ as she dumps the meat cubes into a chopper, gets the fries onto a big pan, and pushes her chair to the other side of the kitchen as the oven beeps that it’s preheated. It’s like his parents in the workshop.

Lydia slides the pan off her lap into the oven and lets the oven door bang shut when it’s in as she spins her chair around to point right at Gorgug. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m still definitely a barbarian! But you and Ragh are good at it, doing better than I’d have done at your age. Got good knife skills too, kid.”

Lydia’s just such a good  _ mom _ , and he is actually really happy to have helped with the fries—all the tiny tinkering and bending of wires with his giant half-orc hands has got to make him better at this small stuff, right? Maybe he’ll tell the rest of the Bad Kids about it when they’re eating them at dinner. 

As if he’s summoned them (Ayda said he’s the greatest wizard of the age, but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t know that spell yet), Kristen and Fig slam gleefully through the door of the manor.

“Gorgug! Get up to my room, the Maidens just declared a prank war and we have to brainstorm, Adaine and Riz and Fabian said they’re coming from school soon!” Fig shouts at him from halfway up the stairs. 

“Uh, yeah, sure, just one sec!” Gorgug yells back. He tells Lydia, “Uh, thanks for letting me help, Mrs. Barkrock, the tool thing makes sense. And I bet those fries are gonna taste good. I’m gonna go though, hoot growl!” He pauses. "Oh, uh, I don't know if you know what that means, it's kinda a bloodrush team thing—"

"I was a Owlbear Bloodrush mom for four years, and there was a point when i thought it was gonna be five, you know," Lydia chuckles. "Hoot growl!"

"Thanks, Mrs. Barkrock! Hoot growl!" and he takes off up the stairs to his friends, one tool jangling at his belt loop and another tool strapped to his back and another simmering comfortably in his heart. 

* * *

5\. Compass Points Library

Not that he’d actually ever say no to a friend who called him for some tinkering help, but Gorgug’s grateful Ayda’s jiggled with the enchantments on the door to the Compass Points a little. Professor Aguefort put it right in her quarters, which was great for her and Fig but made Gorgug feel kinda shy about visiting the library for a while. Which was too bad—that friendship section seemed cool, the last time he was there. 

Today, he opens the enchanted door to a little hallway right across from a normal door marked “Quarters of the Mistress of the Compass Points.”

Gorgug isn’t really a library person, but he thinks he could enjoy the Compass Points. Even just as he walks down the hallway and out a “Staff Only” door to the library proper, the air smells distinctly of ocean and he can hear a very loud storytime happening in some other room of the Compass Points. Actually, given all the pirate curse words he can hear, maybe it’s not an official storytime and just some random person who’s  _ really _ enthusiastic about a story? 

He gets to the main room of the library, which is absolutely dominated by the three-story-tall Compass Points telescope. He's tipping his head a little to the side so that he can read the plaque on the side of the telescope's base when he hears the tapping of talons on wood behind him.

"Not reading wizardry, are you?" Ayda asks, raising an eyebrow. She's behind him, but he can tell she's doing it. 

Gorgug grins and puts his hands up in mock surrender as he turns around to see his friend. "Oh god, no, don't worry."

"Good. As you know, it's expressly forbidden." Ayda's hands are held behind her back and her tone is as calm as befits the mistress of the Compass Points, but one side of her mouth is quirked up in the smile reserved for her best friends—it’s a smile you have to know to look for. Their back-and-forth is a ritual Gorgug's come to love, an exchange that goes the same way every time Ayda catches him reading anything at all—an Aguefort history textbook or a letter from Ragh or the back of a cereal box even. Ayda asking him “Wizardry?” is how half of their conversations start. 

The conversations are more often on the other side of Professor Aguefort's enchanted door; Ayda spends plenty of time in Elmville these days, and Gorgug doesn't make it out to Leviathan as often as Adaine or Fig. But he and Fig have spent most evenings the last week in the Thistlespring garage in a pile of amps and wires figuring out the next album, and he’s here to take a break. And do Ayda a favor. 

“Ready for me to fix your thing?” he asks. His axe is hefted over his shoulder, but he’ll probably actually end up mostly using the tiny little multitool in his hoodie pocket. 

“Of course. To be honest it’s not a very useful telescope anymore, advanced scrying and arcanotech calculators do the navigation. It’s mostly an arcane focus for magic I do in the library.” Ayda says, like it’s simple. Gorgug nods along—it makes enough sense, mostly.

“That being said, it is still  _ very _ broken from when I left during spring break,” she adds, shrugging. “And I would appreciate an artificer’s eye on it.”

Honestly, forget the artificer stuff being fun: Gorgug’s enjoying just being on top of the Compass Points telescope. He hauls himself up the gears of the orrery like they’re pull-up bars to find himself halfway up the telescope. The massive roof is rolled back partway so the gusty ocean wind is reduced to a pleasant, sea-salty breeze, and the brass filigree on the sides of the telescope makes it fun to climb. There’s something about being on something so big and working on something so small, Gorgug thinks. He’s two and a half stories in the air, sitting on the massive body of the telescope like it’s a gigantic cylindrical steed and clambering over it to work on different parts. Ayda waves at him from her ladder as she mage hands books from a cart back onto shelves. She was right—it’s  _ super _ broken, and he can at least tighten some screws and clean off some mirrors. And bang out some dents with his axe if they’re super big. He doesn’t really have a way to check if it’s  _ working _ , but it does look nicer when he’s done. 

By the time he’s finished, the sky above the open roof has changed from clear blue to sunset red. He doesn’t know if there’s something that automatically lights the torches, but there’s firelight gleaming off the polished wood and brass of the telescope, making strange sea-monstery shadows in the filigree. Gorgug dusts off his hands— _ ugh, pirate telescope brass has a ton of grime. And maybe bird poop from the open roof?  _ —and takes care to fold up his multitool before climbing down using the brass decorations as handholds. 

Sure, orange slices after finishing up might be more of a barbarian’s bloodrush tradition—Ragh’s mom Lydia always gave him a tupperware to bring for after practice—than it is an artificer’s, but he enjoys it anyway. Ayda finds him sitting there on the railing that encircles the telescope, feet hooked around the lower rail so he can lean back and not fall. 

“Hey Ayda, want some orange slices?” Gorgug holds out the container of sliced-up fruit he brought in his backpack.

Ayda lets out a happy screech. “I’d be delighted! This is excellent.” She flaps her wings once and perches on the rail next to him, curling her talons around it and wrapping her arms around her knees so she’s crouching. Ayda surveys the tupperware for a second and delicately selects a slice. 

“The telescope’s really cool,” he offers. “Fun to climb, too.”

“Intriguing. A library outreach project, perhaps.” Beside him, Ayda’s followed his gaze up to the top, where red sky is rapidly purpling into dark. The telescope makes a nice silhouette.”

“Strong enough for me to climb it. Even the little flowery metal parts, they’re pretty solid,” Gorgug says. 

Ayda’s gaze upwards turns evaluative and she says, “I have never tried to climb the Compass Points Telescope.” 

“Because you can fly,” Gorgug realizes wisely.

“Precisely. But in a century and a half the Compass Points has been raided by pirates countless time, and no one has managed to plunder the telescope yet, so I suppose it is strong enough.” Ayda takes another orange slice. 

“Kristen’s weirdly into rock climbing, she’d give you some good advice.”  
Ayda furrows two orange brows. “Even though she has terrible dex?”

“Just, god, the worst dex.” Gorgug shakes his head and Ayda screech-laughs happily. 

They both kind of fade off into comfortable silence. Gorgug likes that—Ayda gets it, and she’s okay to just sit with him sometimes. 

“Didja know Fig’s naming the next single ‘Telescope’? Oh wait, you probably do, Fig—”

“Fig tells me everything, yes, but it is still good when you tell me things, too,” Ayda says, and Gorgug understands what she means. People don’t usually tell him things.

“There’s not a whole ton to tell, but I also came here to like. Check it out. Kinda like research, I guess.” In hindsight, he’s not really sure why—Fig writes their lyrics mostly, not him. Oh well. He got to repair some mirror stuff for Ayda, so it all worked out.

“And so? Have you determined what a telescope is, master artificer?”

Gorgug nods, very solemnly. He’s not really sure how master artificers are supposed to act—his parents and the Tinkerer’s Guild kind of just act like people? But Ayda’s asking for his advice on something, and so maybe he has to be fancy. 

“Yes. I have, uh, determined that it’s a spyglass pointed at the stars. Like 99.5% sure.” Gorgug squints and makes a pinching gesture with two fingers to show what he means. “ _ Really  _ sure. Just a big spyglass. Cool one though.” 

Ayda grins, and he grins back. “Fascinating. Masterful. Well, it’s a conclusive determination from a master artificer, and I will note this down. A conclusive determination from a friend, too,” she adds. “So I guess I have no choice but to accept your answer to the riddle.” 

They’re done with the tupperware so Gorgug methodically seals it up, pressing around the edges to make sure it’s all the way closed. He stretches his legs out a little and goes to stand up—Lydia’s making chili tonight and the Thistlesprings are invited, so he should probably get back to Mordred. “The telescope really is cool. I could help with sticking rock climbing holds on it later, if you want.”

He knows Ayda doesn’t really like to be touched in general but she unfolds herself from her perch when he hops off the railing to give him a vicelike hug. “I will think about it,” she promises as she walks him back through the staff door back to where her quarters and office are. 

He’s got a hand on the knob of the door back to Mordred when he remembers something and turns around. “Gravity axe weight training later? While Fig’s doing spa day with her mom this weekend?”

“Of course. And thank you for the repairs on the telescope.” Ayda waves goodbye and bounces up and down on her taloned feet as she says, “See you later, master artificer.” 

* * *

+1  ~~ Aguefort Academy shop class ~~ Multiclasser’s Guild ice cream social 

It's not quite as chaotic or colorful in here as the average meeting of the Aguefort LGBTQ Student Union, but the tinkering shop room is ferociously decorated for the first Multiclassers' Guild ice cream social. As Fabian climbs down from the step ladder having hung up the last streamers, he gives Gorgug a “hoot growl, you’ve got this!” and a backslap. 

Gorgug's been talking to Jawbone for months about how to get something like this together at Aguefort, and Jawbone thankfully handled all the talking to the shop class teacher to get them the room. Even though he  _ might _ take an artificer elective next year, Gorgug doesn’t quite know Professor Hans Orion well enough yet, and he seems a little scary.

Fig and Fabian are the kind of people who usually start this kind of thing. It’d taken a lot of “You  _ got _ this, my guy. This is your  _ thing _ , it’s your idea, you should do it!” from Fabian and “You’ve been doing great moderating the Cig Figs YouTube channel, you can for sure wrangle some Aguefort students into doing something that’ll be  _ fun _ anyways, I’ll help!” from Fig and a lot of texts back and forth to Ragh in Fallinel (who’s got his own satellite-uplinked crystal) to ask about how it’d worked with the LGBTQ Student Union the year before. 

But Gorgug’s wanted to do something with other multiclassers for a while. He really loves his one level of artificer, and, well. He's best friend and drummer to a bard who's picked up a barbarian hybrid Reckless Shred and also a solid bunch of hexblade spells from an archdevil of hell. A bardlock whose patron might now be, now that he's thinking about it, her… self? Maybe  _ Fig _ is the one who is her own dad. 

Zelda puts all of herself into the battle dance, and he can't really see Adaine or Kristen or Riz putting levels into any other classes, either, so multiclassing's not for everyone. But Gorgug loves being able to tinker and make things and do magic with the multitool hanging from his belt that’s just as much a part of his everyday as the giant axe on his back, and Fabian is obviously living his best life as a elven sheet dancer bard. Talking to people isn’t quite Gorgug’s thing, but he does want more people to be able to talk about multiclassing. A social seems like a good idea—his friends are all here to help out with the talking part, too. 

People are starting to trickle in, serving themselves some ice cream and chatting and some of them working on projects or practice. Gorgug’s grateful there’s something to do with your  _ hands _ in here—a bunch of the shop class lab tables have little level one artificer tinkering projects laid out on them. There’s also a bucket full of hairpins and paper clips that Riz immediately started folding into lockpicks, and Ayda and Adaine (cheerfully not planning to multiclass, thank you, but here to hang out and get some ice cream) both have their heads bent over a spell scroll at another table. 

Gorgug grabs a solo cup of soda and takes a walk around the room. Zelda's there for moral support, and she's dragged along Antiope, who's been wondering if she should look into some cleric multiclassing (and mostly talking to Ostentatia about it where the three of them are standing in a circle, because the Seven Maidens do tend to stick together in that way, but at least they're here). As Zelda catches his eye, she gives him a little wave from across the room before turning back to listen to Antiope. 

Some freshman he knows from PE for Martial Classes offers Gorgug a fist bump and asks him a couple of questions about maybe picking up an artificer level as a fighter. Gorgug tells him about Fabian picking up bard levels and fighting with a sheet now, and the freshman’s eyes go wide. The freshman can’t quite lift the gravity axe yet, but they talk shop about it for a while—he wants to do bigger stuff than Gorgug does, maybe weapons or artillery. After careful experimentation (read: backyard sleepover nights) with the Bad Kids, Gorgug’s discovered that the hole in the center of his blade where a little hovering stone sits can also hold marbles, erasers, cheetoes, or other small objects, so there are currently three popped popcorn kernels hovering in there, circling each other like tiny moons. 

“Anyway, you should talk to Fabian about fighter multiclasses, trust me, he’ll love to talk about it. He’s here… somewhere?” Gorgug furrows his eyebrows and turns to look around the room. The shop classroom isn’t that large, and Fabian, well. Fabian kind of commands every room he’s in. 

With a soft  _ plink _ , something small and yellow flies across his field of view and hits his… axe? Gorgug only gets a second to grudgingly admit it’s kind of cool that it landed directly in the hole in the blade before a bunch more kernels hit him lightly in the face and Fabian jumps out from underneath one of the tables to put him in a headlock. 

“My dear Gorgug, did I hear you summon your nearest and dearest  _ bard _ ?” Fabian exclaims as Gorgug deftly gets him in a headlock instead. 

“What the hell were you doing hiding, you fucker,” Gorgug says, “you’re the poster child for multiclassing I know and you  _ love _ talking to people.” 

He gets his answer when a tiefling-red hand dumps a handful of something light into his hood and then Fabian pulls it up over Gorgug’s head from within the grapple, and now Gorgug’s got a bunch of kettle corn in his hair and also all over the floor.  _ Oops, Orion is going to be pissed if we grind popcorn into the floor _ . And to add insult to injury, another popcorn kernel bounces off his nose.  _ What in the world— _

“Yep, boba straw blowgun for kettle corn ammo,” Fig says happily as she walks out from under a table, raising the weapon in question to her lips and  _ plink _ -ing another kernel right into the hole in his axe. There are like six kernels stuck together and spinning in there now, forming a ball basically the size of the rock that usually hovers in his axe. 

“I— what. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of that weapon. Hi, Fig,” says Gorgug. 

Fig reaches up (and up, she’s not that tall despite the heeled combat boots) to mess with his hair. “Hey there master artificer, the social’s going pretty well.”

Fabian somehow manages to roll his eyes  _ loudly _ . “‘Master artificer’? Fig, you sound like Ayda.”

“What can I say, my girlfriend’s awesome and I’m honored. Anyway, Gorgug, I know you’re not a bard, but wanna give this room a little Cig Figs special?” With a wicked archdevil-rock-star grin, Fig produces his drumsticks—which were in his zipped-up backpack on the other side of the room, but he guesses Riz either got roped into this or taught Fig some sleight of hand skills—and puts them in the hand he automatically reaches out. 

“I’m— I’m checking on people, hey Fabian, this is Paul and he’s a fighter and wondering about multiclassing from that—”

“Sorry Paul, Fabian loves to tell stories and he’s definitely gonna come back and talk to you later but right now we have some  _ music _ to make!” Usually it’s hard for anyone to yank Gorgug fully off his feet, with his strength, but Fig is very determined and manages to pull him away from the conversation. Fabian does some complicated magic-trick looking thing with his sheet so that Paul is left looking confused as the sheet drops and Gorgug is suddenly five feet away, trotting after where Fig’s tugging his arm towards his drum kit, which she must have been setting up while Gorgug and Fabian worked on decorations. 

“Um, Fig? I’m supposed to be talking to people and, like, giving advice and stuff, I don’t know if…” Gorgug trails off because suddenly Zelda’s at his side with the other two Maidens.

“Gonna play a couple of Cig Figs songs, Thistlespring?” Antiope asks evenly. She’s got archer’s steady eyes and it’s kind of intense to look right at her, so he looks down at Zelda instead. 

“The new single’s really good, Fig let me listen to a preview of the produced version,” Zelda chimes in, looking at Antiope but twining her fingers around Gorgug’s. 

“Uh, yeah, we can play ‘Telescope’ maybe? If you want to hear it” Gorgug says. Zelda can rope him into anything and he’s not even mad about it, and he’d bet Fig knows this and got her in on it on purpose. 

But it goes great—Gorgug starts tapping out the beat, and Fig shreds on the Infaethable Bass, and Fabian is commanding the whole room by twirling his sheet in a freestyle dance routine. Gorgug ducks out after one song as a bunch of other bards (why do bards travel in packs? He supposes he can’t really judge, since he hangs out with  _ two _ in the same party) descend on the sound system and stage and start up an honest to god jam session with a bass guitar, an elven sheet dancer, some bagpipes, a cello, and some spoken word poetry that Gorgug definitely doesn’t understand. 

He does manage to make it around the room with no more popcorn blowgun attacks while Fig and Fabian are holding court. Some tiny wizard kid, of all people, wants to ask about some barbarian stuff and Gorgug has to hurriedly tell her, “I’m so sorry, I’m not allowed to know wizard stuff, but my friend Adaine has a spell where she just punches people until they die and that sounds like the kind of thing you want, you should go ask her, she’s over there” as he backs away and nearly trips over his own feet. 

Gorgug spends some more time talking to people. Because of the way nearly all social events with the Bad Kids go, he also spends some time retaping torn-down streamers onto the wall and refilling the bowl of popcorn. On the other hand, he also gets to sit down with Riz for a second at his table on the side of the party. Riz probably started out this social being a wallflower and dragging the bucket of bobby pins over here, but by now he’s holding court and teaching a mini workshop as he methodically twists bobby pins into lockpicks. Kristen’s here with a massive bowl of ice cream, and at some point the Maidens drifted over—Kristen and Ostentiatia are in all the same cleric classes and are loudly complaining about some group project and their shitty groupmates. While they’re distracted, it looks like Riz is working on convincing Antiope to put her multiclass levels into rogue instead of cleric. Gorgug knows he’ll keep trying for a while, but he couldn’t tell you how well it’s working. Probably not very? Gorgug slides onto a stool at the table (next to Zelda, of course, so he can slide her his bowl and she can nibble at the unpopped popcorn kernels by unspoken agreement) and follows along as Riz shows them how to make a rake pick and a tensioning wrench. 

Gorgug’s surprised when Jawbone comes over and holds out a hand for a fist bump.

“You did good here, kid,” he says. In hindsight, Gorgug shouldn’t be that surprised—Jawbone’s technically the moderator of this little Multiclasser’s Guild Club and the supervisor of the ice cream social, but he’s mostly been unobtrusively standing by the snack tables and loading up his sundaes with strawberry syrup. 

“Uh, thanks Jawbone, I hope we’re not wrecking Orion’s classroom too much.”

“At Aguefort? A popcorn mess’s  _ tame _ , for these floors. But honestly, Orion’s probably going to get more artificers if you keep up these socials, so he should be thanking you, kiddo.” Jawbone nods at the other end of the table, where a bunch of people are clustered around the little gadgets Gorgug artificed earlier as demos. One of them is playing a short video from a Cig Figs concert. “You’re good at this, you know. I watched your guys’ livestream when you fought the Nightmare King, you being able to set that up was really clutch.”

Gorgug nods, not really sure what to say here. Jawbone looks like he’s fine with that, though. “It’s— was mostly a kind of a personal quest,” Gorgug finally says, shrugging. “But yeah, artificing’s cool.”

Jawbone’s face is pretty hard to read, but he always makes an effort to show he’s listening—his head’s cocked to one side and his ears are pricked forward as he nods. “Half your guys’ party multiclassed this quest, huh. Would think you’re pretty much an expert on it now.”

Jawbone claps Gorgug on the shoulder as he stands up and says, “Go have fun with your friends, and you should really try some ice cream with that strawberry syrup before I eat it all.” He’s turning to go when he winks jocularly at Gorgug and adds, “But y’know, you and I have a college and career advising meeting next Tuesday, and I think I’ve got some ideas we can talk about.” 

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently my brand is loving Gorgug Thistlespring and I'm not even mad about it. 
> 
> Writing this fic was so fun, and it took me over the top of my Camp NaNoWriMo word count goal! Search history during research for this fic included: blade weapons, chili recipes, diy wheelchair maintenance, blowguns, shop class, Skype ringtones, citronella candles, and sad punk rock music. It ended up being written to the sounds of SubRosa's "Borrowed Time, Borrowed Eyes" and Louie Zong's entire dungeonsynth album _Beyond the Edge of the World._
> 
> Kudos and comments feed my lil creator soul like Riz chowing down on Kalvaxus, and I reply to every one! 
> 
> Find my D20 sideblog on tumblr @acedetectivegukgak!


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